Alan Lee

Thoughts on Mr Lee's opinion of the Irish horses?

Willie Mullins trained 12 Punchestown winners for the second successive year but there is a suspicion the top Irish horses are backyard bullies. Mullins, for one, measures himself at Cheltenham and Irish winners in the principal Festival races have become rare.
Click to expand...
 
I think the general feeling before the meeting was that attendances would drop below last years figures. I don't think the increase is important - but the fact they didn't drop is.

krizon said:
72 more than 2009 - that's a laugh! A few thousand would've been significant. It doesn't make any sense to talk about travel restrictions - without the restrictions in 2009, there were just 72 people less, that's all. Be interesting to know what their figures were for 2007, before the financial meltdown started in earnest.
Click to expand...
 
The fact that the attendance remained basically the samen is very encouraging in the current climate.

As regards Mr Lee and Irish horses I really can't figure what the significance of his ramblings is.
 
Perhaps Alan Lee would like to consider the following figures, showing races and prize money won in GB and Ireland combined in the season just ended, before deciding how Mullins ought to measure himself:

TRAINER Wins Runs % TOTAL PRIZE
W P Mullins 148 585 25.3% £3,144,601
P F Nicholls 117 542 21.6% £3,040,971


Here is the rest of the top 20:

N J Henderson 136 524 26.0% £2,062,340

Jonjo O'Neill 105 723 14.5% £1,777,073
N A Twiston-Davies 72 668 10.8% £1,704,954
D E Pipe 102 562 18.1% £1,289,552
P J Hobbs 87 568 15.3% £1,272,990
Noel Meade 61 428 14.3% £1,234,913
D T Hughes 45 438 10.3% £1,006,679
E J O'Grady 54 342 15.8% £920,737
A King 76 593 12.8% £919,942
Evan Williams 78 607 12.9% £796,870
D McCain Jnr 88 534 16.5% £772,553
Paul Nolan 33 241 13.7% £688,665
Mrs John Harrington 33 384 8.6% £658,555
Gordon Elliott 62 394 15.7% £605,810
C A Murphy 24 236 10.2% £603,546
J Howard Johnson 62 410 15.1% £579,045
Nick Williams 22 116 19.0% £551,947
Henry De Bromhead 25 177 14.1% £536,322
 
Comparing the English and Irish Trainers by using their respective prize money tables is a bit like suggesting Rangers and Celtic are the equals of Manchester United and Chelsea.
 
davidjohnson said:
Comparing the English and Irish Trainers by using their respective prize money tables is a bit like suggesting Rangers and Celtic are the equals of Manchester United and Chelsea.
Click to expand...

In your analogy, David, which is supposed to be which, and why?
 
davidjohnson said:
Comparing the English and Irish Trainers by using their respective prize money tables is a bit like suggesting Rangers and Celtic are the equals of Manchester United and Chelsea.
Click to expand...

Theres a hell of a lot more money in the EPL this clearly is a legimiate comparision
 
I'd suggest Irish racing table resembles Scottish football where the game is dominated by one or 2 stables and it suffers badly for lack of competition. The British racing table, like the Premier League, may only ever be won by one or 2 stables, but those that sit in the top 10 will give them plenty of scares and gain good results throughout the season.

The point than Alan Lee was making is valid, it would show serious lack of ambition from Mullins if he was truly satisfied with his Cheltenham this year given what he achieved with his horses at Punchestown.
 
If that's all he was saying than no one is going to argue with that. Top trainers always want to do better .

However given the amount of money he has won this year I'm sure in general he will be not be displeased with his haul. You have to be able win in your own back yard first. Travelling a horse is a completely different proposition. If it was easy, British horses would be competing more over here given the prize money. Why don't they if this is the SPL.No matter how good a trainer Mullins is I'm sure he realises the disadvantage he is at travelling horses to compete across the water.
 
davidjohnson said:
I'd suggest Irish racing table resembles Scottish football where the game is dominated by one or 2 stables and it suffers badly for lack of competition. The British racing table, like the Premier League, may only ever be won by one or 2 stables, but those that sit in the top 10 will give them plenty of scares and gain good results throughout the season.
Click to expand...

Harrington, Hughes, Meade, Murphy, Byrnes, O'Grady, Nolan, DeBromhead, Hourigan, Morris etc - all capable of giving Mullins "plenty of scares and gain good results" throughout the season.

The Irish jumping scene pretty much mirrors the British one in my view. Could never see the likes of Hobbs or Twiston David being Champion Trainer but capable of handling a good horse well like Harrington or Murphy.

Nicholls and Henderson are really the only two likely Champion trainers in Britain with Mullins the don at home. Same level of domination.
 
Looking at the average prize money won by the top ten jumps trainers in Ireland and Britain over the last three years, it seems that the second and third in GB get closer to their winner, but the 4th through 10th in Ireland are all closer to their winner than in Britain, with the gap expanding the further you go.
 
It would be a mistake, David, to assume that the NH scene in Ireland has always been similar to the flat. There has never been an equivalent of Ballydoyle dominating the jumps scene year in year out.

Willie Mullins did not inherit his dominant position, nor did it happen overnight. Going back a few years there was a duopoly between himself and Noel Meade, but go back a bit further to around 2000 and before and there were no NH trainers in Ireland operating on anything remotely like the scale of Pipe, Henderson, Hobbs or Nicholls, just a spread of medium-sized ones. What Mullins has built up in the last few years is not down to lack of competition, it is something he has achieved despite the competition.

The presence of nine other Irish stables in that top 20, plus several others outside it who had Grade 1 wins during the year, does not support your argument about strength in depth, or the lack of it, and nor does the fact that the better races in the UK and Ireland are often contested by stables on both sides of the Irish Sea.

Therefore I don't see why it is not valid to compare the performance of Irish and British-based stables. Mullins won more races last year than Nicholls, slightly more prize money and with a better strike rate.

Just a few years ago nobody thought what Nicholls was achieving could be matched but now it has. Given that context, chuntering on about a disappointing Cheltenham for Mullins is blinkered.

As
 
I should clarify, by the way, that Mullins's father, Paddy Mullins, was indeed a very important trainer in Ireland, but not a dominant one along the lines of a Pipe Sr or a Nicholls. So Willie Mullins did have a heritage to build on, unlike Nicholls who had none, but he has brought it to a new level.
 
Backyard bullies?! What a load of shite. Is there a bigger backyard bully in training than Diamond Harry?! [To name just one!]

I thought Big Zeb was a backyard bully?!
 
Back
Top